I feel I can’t live without my daughter, says mother of body-in-suitcase victim

The mother of a woman whose body was found in a suitcase at a north London sports ground today spoke for the first time of her devastation.

Alexandra Kovacs, 25, a production assistant from Hungary, was stuffed into the suitcase and left in bushes near her home in Mill Hill in July.

Her boyfriend Laszlo Gyarmati, 29, is accused of her murder and will appear at the Old Bailey next month for a hearing.

Ms Kovacs’s mother Rita Horváth described her daughter, known as Szandi, as very generous.

She had been sending money home to support her mother and eight-year-old brother.

“My son knows what happened with his sister,” she said. “He misses Szandi, but he still believes that one day our beloved will step through the door and everything will be okay. Sometimes I feel I can’t live without my daughter. Only my son keeps me alive.”

Ms Horváth travelled to London to identify the body but could only recognise her daughter “by the shape of her eyes” as she was so disfigured. “My first trip was to my daughter’s house, because I wanted to see the place where she had lived.

“The pain was terrible but I calmed down a little when I saw she lived in a decent place.”

She said her daughter had been “cautious when meeting with boys” after one of her close friends was murdered by an ex-boyfriend. At a previous hearing, the Old Bailey was told how Ms Kovacs’s housemates heard screams at about 3am on July 18.

They reported her missing to police two days later. Her body was found in Thornfield Avenue, Hendon, on July 21. She was buried in Hungary, next to her grandfather.